In the Waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea
by MapleFlavouredIce
Summary: The ghost of Carne's grudge follows the Buccellati gang high into the sky, and down into the watery depths of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Giorno's commitment to his dream, and to Bruno, is not so much tested as it is proven. He reconstructs both his arms and their relationship on the beaches of Sardinia. Discord links in my profile.
1. On the plane

Losing his right hand is fantastically painful.

Giorno can perhaps, distantly, intellectually, logically, appreciate Mista's quick thinking. The enemy stand _had_ been crawling up and consuming his flesh, and Gold Experience was being eaten as well, if the hole in their forearm had been any indication. Knowing this did not make it hurt less when Mista had shot his arm off. He hears what is probably the flesh and blood of his hand splatter against the wall of the cabin, and he hears it keenly over the comparatively quiet hum of the airplane's engine. It was said that experience would help to familiarize and even make certain things boring in their repetition, but Giorno thinks that no amount of experience would dull this pain. Or maybe it simply hadn't happened to him enough yet. Giorno's sure that at the rate he's been going since joining Passione that he'll have ample opportunity to test this hypothesis.

"Might want to make yourself a new arm, Giorno." Mista speaks before Giorno has had enough time to parse the pain, and he clutches at the stump of his forearm uselessly. He doesn't look at Mista, and the words barely register past his surface thoughts. His left palm is so thickly coated that he can't see his own skin, and his fingers can just barely wrap around the wound. His grip is slippery. He's tried to move his thighs out of the way of the blood that's dripping down at an alarming rate, but he can already feel a tacky wetness on the underneath of his thighs.

He thinks of the man that they had killed back on the airport tarmac.

A distant part of himself wishes that they had been able to enjoy the offerings of Venice, and that they had had the time to discover her secrets. It's the same part, he thinks, that had written on the cabin wall about wanting a margherita pizza. It's probably also the same part that had written _porca miseria_ under all the other scribbles.

Giorno doesn't notice Bruno moving until he feels a hand on his shoulder, and it jolts him from numbly staring at the bloody mess of his hand and the stand. He knows that Bruno has kneeled next to him not because he sees the action but because he hears the shift of Bruno's clothes and because he feels the presence of Bruno's body next to his own, which normally would have brought him some level of comfort but now only serves as another distraction.

"I need your arm," Bruno says. Giorno sees a flash of blue in his peripheral vision and knows that Sticky Fingers must be reaching for him. Giorno lets go of his forearm and performs the awkward dance of presenting it to Bruno, expecting the sensation of being able to move _something_ below his elbow but getting caught by the fact that there is _nothing_. Sticky Fingers' hand touches the wound, and then it is closed with a zipper. It still hurts, and it is little consolation that he no longer has to be hypervigilant about where his arm is leaking blood. Giorno looks at Bruno.

A Bruno is profile is a marginally easier Bruno to deal with. This is only considering the fact that Giorno doesn't have to directly look into the man's eyes, which are such a strong and clear blue that Giorno feels he would never quite be able to describe it. He blames the blood loss when he starts focusing on the curve of Bruno's lashes and eyelids, and on the arch of Bruno's nose. He must feel Giorno's staring, and he turns his gaze from the mess to meet Giorno's.

"How did a stand get on the plane? You said that you felt nothing alive onboard before we left." Neither Bruno's eyes nor the tone of his voice is accusing but Giorno feels guilty all the same.

"_Alive_." Giorno repeats, and he becomes distressingly aware of the lack of heat from Bruno's palm on his shoulder. He moves on from that thought as quickly as he can. "This stand must have been activated when Mista killed the user." Sticky Fingers has not yet let go of Giorno's arm, but the sensation of touch is dulled by the zipper, and the fact that his nerves are singing with pain. Giorno feels when Sticky Fingers runs their palm over his arm all the same.

Bruno's eyes get an odd glint. "I suppose it's not… entirely unreasonable for a stand to operate beyond the death of its user."

"Or maybe _because_ of the user's death?" Bruno frowns at Giorno's words.

"That man came to die? Why would he—"

"How do you find out about your stand power if you have to die to activate it? Sounds completely useless!" Narancia interrupts Bruno, waving a dismissive hand at the mess that has slowly slipped down the wall into an unfortunate puddle on the floor.

"Useless or not," Bruno says in a sharp tone, preventing Narancia from saying whatever else he had to criticize the enemy stand, "we need to find a way to deal with it."

Bruno has still not removed his hand from Giorno's shoulder, and in fact he instead runs it along Giorno's back has he speaks, with sweeping swipes of his palms that go from one shoulder to the other, and then back again and again. Giorno feels the touch keenly, and it cuts through the pain in a way that he had not expected. He stops himself from leaning in to it and instead focuses on Narancia.

"It appears to be drawn to movement. Don't get close to it, Narancia." Giorno says, eyeing the other teen as he seems to be contemplating the stand with a seriousness that Giorno had only seen once before on his face, back in Venice. Giorno's stomach sinks when Aerosmith's visor appears on Narancia's face.

"I don't have to touch it at all," Narancia says while calling Aerosmith to his side, and the toy plane hovers by his face, its body such a brightly colored plastic that Giorno still finds himself taken aback by the fact that it shoots actual bullets. Narancia sweeps out an arm and the enemy stand jumps, taking Giorno's hand with it in a display that has Giorno's stomach rolling suspiciously in his gut.

Aerosmith explodes into action. At this distance the _bratatat_ of its machine guns reverberate not just through the air but through Giorno's ears and through Giorno's bones, and he flinches away from the assault as his hearing reduces to a shocked background of painful white noise. So focused is he on the high ringing that's currently rattling in his head, he misses when Narancia gasps. Giorno feels when Bruno drags the two of them away from Narancia and the other stand, and he laments the truly uncomfortable sensation of blood further soaking his pants, and how it trickles down behind his knees. There is blessed quiet when Aerosmith stops shooting, but it only lasts for so long. The temporary peace ends when Mista begins to speak.

"You shouldn't have attacked it," Mista coughs out, and when Giorno turns to look at Mista he sees blood spurting from about a million different places, from cuts that Giorno can't even begin to guess the origins of. Somehow the wounds get worse before their very eyes, and Mista sways into one of the seats. "It's got you now too."

Bruno leaves Giorno's side for Mista's, and he begins the arduous task of zipping all the cuts closed.

"What are you talking about, Mista?" Narancia asks, Aerosmith hovering around his head as an ever vigilant protector.

Whatever Mista would have said is lost when Mista loses consciousness, and Giorno turns back to the stand, which seems to have… consumed his fingers, and is now quite energetically gnawing away at four of Sex Pistols in the middle of the aisle. Narancia must see what Giorno sees, if his yell is any indication. Aerosmith bursts into another flurry of action, and very nearly bursts Giorno's eardrums at the same time. To Giorno's ever-growing horror, he watches as the stand jumps up to meet the bullets, and it somehow uses those bullets as a path straight back to Aerosmith's machine guns, and the longer Narancia shoots the closer it gets. Eventually it bridges that gap with one final, famished pounce. It is ravenous. Something about dying or being dead must have left it with an insatiable appetite, and now it must be trying to find what it has lost in their flesh and in their blood. Maybe that's all that they were to this enemy stand—fuel, meat. _Carne_.

Narancia goes down in a more spectacular fashion than Mista had, and before Narancia's body can even hit the floor, Bruno is yelling at Trish.

"Go hide in the closet! We'll take care of this!"

The stand whizzes by Bruno's head, ignoring Aerosmith in favor of Trish, who has just turned to run down the aisle.

_Ah_, Giorno thinks to himself. _It's not just the movement—it's who is moving the most_.

Giorno has only so much time to crawl towards one of the windows, and his crawling is slow enough as to not attract the attention of the enemy stand. He also has only the one hand left, and his aim must be true. He grabs one of his broaches before he gets to the window, and he tries to imbue it with as much life energy as he can muster, but he still feels dizzy from the blood loss. He could have just as easily made any sorts of animals lying dormant in the broach, just as he could have made a replacement arm. He has to trust that his mind did not stray too much, and he tosses the broach as far away from him as he can, which is pitifully not very far. The broach falls with a wet squish, and the carpet looks saturated and gray with the combination of its blue synthetic fibers and the puddle of Giorno's blood.

Gold Experience reaches the window before Giorno does, and it responds to his thoughts with little urging. He hears Bruno and Trish yell distantly over the shattering of glass, and he feels rather than sees the stand attack his left arm. It begins to eat almost as soon as it touches his skin, and Giorno knows that the pain of its eating will not even compare to the pain of his next actions. He stabs his arm on a shard of the window, and he tries to ignore how all the air in the cabin is rushing out and taking his breath with it.

"It attacks whoever is moving the fastest!" Giorno shouts over the wind, and he keeps his eyes trained at the blob that is currently enveloping his hand.

"Giorno, wait!" Bruno calls out in response. "The damage will be permanent if you remove your other hand! It's not worth it!"

The glass both is and is not sharp enough to do its job. It slices through Giorno's skin with ease, but it reaches considerable resistance the deeper it digs into his flesh. "If we can get this thing off the plane along with my left arm," Giorno pants out as he pushes his weight forward and onto his forearm, "we'll get to Sardinia safely."

"Please, Giorno," Bruno says, and it's his tone of voice that has Giorno turning his attention away from his arm and over his shoulder, to meet Bruno's gaze. It's a difficult thing to do, what with the wind whipping their hair around their faces, and with how his arm is caught on the glass, but he tries to do it all the same. Bruno moves towards Giorno, slowly, and by holding onto the closest seat and stepping into the aisle.

"Please, Giorno," Bruno repeats. "Swap with me. I can afford to lose an arm—you can't."

Bruno's pupils are blown wide and all-encompassingly dark, and his left arm is outstretched towards Giorno. A left arm for a left arm, Giorno supposes.

"Even without my arms, everything can go as planned."

"What are you…? Absolutely _not_. You _will_ listen to me, as your capo—" Bruno takes another step closer, but stumbles with the jostling of the cabin.

"I'm sorry, Buccellati—_oh_—" Giorno squints against the pain as he shifts more of his weight down, and he knows that he will need to push hard, "but I must do this."

It takes a moment for Bruno to both register Giorno's words, and then to register their meaning. But when he does—he rushes. Giorno keeps his head turned away from the window, and he can feel the blood dribbling down his arm, warm and wet. What he had thought was a fantastic pain when Mista had shot his other arm pales in comparison to _this_ pain, and he wants to close his eyes against it. He keeps them open instead, and watches Bruno. He pushes down. Giorno pushes down with a gasp that rips itself from his chest, and Bruno gasps with him, those blue eyes riveted to the mess that must be Giorno's arm. He feels every centimeter of the glass cut through his flesh, and he feels when it comes out the other side, and passes through his skin.

Giorno collapses, but does not hit the floor. Instead, there is Bruno.

"You stupid, stupid boy." Bruno says with a tight voice, and that tightness is echoed in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and with the frown of his mouth. Giorno's head swims. Giorno's visions swims. He would… he would have clenched his fists, in any other situation, but he no longer has any fists to clench. He can't even clench his jaw or grit his teeth, because the throbbing sensation in his arms has forced his face to go slack, and he barely has any energy to control what limbs he has retained.

Sticky Fingers closes the gaping wound on Giorno's left forearm, and Giorno watches Bruno with unfocused eyes. Or rather, it is less actively watching, and more passively seeing. He sees Bruno, his vision is consumed by the visage of Bruno's face, but he cannot find it in himself to appreciate the details, as he usually would. His eyes scrabble across the planes of Bruno's face, and focus on nothing. The edges of his vision are wobbly. He sees blackspots that he mistakes for new sunspots that he has never seen before on Bruno's skin, but then they flitter away in coquettish squiggles. His forearms pulse. They throb. His vision whites out everytime the remaining muscle below his elbows twitch.

"Buccellati," Giorno chokes out on a strained breath, "now we can—"

"Explain to me," Bruno says softly, moving his face closer to Giorno's. One of Bruno's hands rests between the space above where Giorno's kidneys are, and the other is wrapped tightly around Giorno's waist. "How I am supposed to do anything without you by my side?"

Bruno's movement jostles Giorno ever so slightly, and it sends a fresh sting jolting down his limbs. Giorno whines, low and under his breath, but Bruno hears it all the same. Bruno's face crumples in apology, and he softens his eyes but not his grip.

Giorno licks his lips. His mouth is unbearably dry. "I will still be by your side, in whatever capacity you'll have me. I won't…" The pain has loosened Giorno's tongue, but it has also loosened his grasp on both reality and his consciousness. His vision swims dangerously.

"You should sleep," Bruno says, and the hand around Giorno's waist rubs soothingly against his side, "it will ease the pain."

* * *

**A/N:** Decided to work on a sort of "missing scene" from the canon, during the Notorious B.I.G. fight. Next chapter will be when they reach Sardinia, but I wanted to get this out because I don't know how long that scene will take me, both because I always criminally underestimate how long something will be, and because the semester is starting. Should be defending my thesis proposal in a couple of weeks, so the next time you hear from me I MIGHT be a phd candidate. Or not. Who knows! Also working on chapter 4 of "It's Always You", so never fear! It's just turning out that we may have a 10k car scene and like 5k plotty things towards the end...


	2. In Mr President

Giorno's rest is not restful. He struggles with staying awake, and he struggles with staying asleep. His pulse races everytime he is conscious long enough to have a thought, but he can never remember what that thought was, or why it was important. He rocks in and out of awareness, and it makes him sick with nausea. It rests high in his throat, and he tries to turn to his side to relieve the weight on his chest, but this makes the weight of his body press down on his right arm and he _burns_. It rips through him, not a ripple, but a surging wave, and he collapses onto his back with a gasp. Dimly he recognizes that he must be on the couch, and that he must be inside the room that is Coco Jumbo's stand. It must have worked then. His gamble must have paid off. He hopes that one of them picked up the broach. It would be hard to miss, what with it growing a new hand. Giorno slips back into sleep.

When next he wakes he feels no better, but maybe even worse than he did before. He also feels… suspiciously wet. Opening his eyes is a herculean task, and he's sure that each individual eyelid is, by itself, heavier than Sisyphus' boulder. He has a moment to chide himself for being so dramatic, even if it _is_ in the confines of his own mind, before he is finally able to look around. He wishes that he hadn't. This must all still be a part of a very bizarre dream.

There's water. All over the room.

Giorno looks up. He sees blue. It could either be the sky, or the sea. He has a sinking suspicion that it is the later. Were he feeling generous he might say that it was rain leaking in through the sides of the entrance to Mr. President's room. He is not feeling generous.

The couch is wet beneath him, having gotten thoroughly soaked by the water that is sloshing around. Getting up is more difficult than usual, by virtue of his missing arms, and while the wounds themselves don't hurt when he steadies his forearms on the cushions, it does send pain lancing up his arms when he presses down. Can't even escape that in his dreams, it seems. His lower calves and shoes are absolutely submerged by the time he swings his legs over to the floor. Narancia and Mista are passed out, lying on chairs a little ways away from him.

Usually his dreams are… not so substantial. _Usually_ they're indistinct. Frustratingly blurry, and he can never grasp on to them. Infuriating. He would prefer it if his unconscious mind had a little bit more structure, but he thinks that if this is the alternative, he vastly prefers something that leaves him with an ill sense of dread over vague, half-remembered images, than something so detailed he wishes that he could escape it. He can't—he's not sure what he's supposed to _do_. Immediately he wants to make some plants that would absorb the water, and lots of it. Plants that like the sea. But he _can't_ and it's because he doesn't have any arms. But he… but he does have feet?

He looks down, into the murky mess that's been steadily getting higher and higher. It seems like it won't reach the seat cushions for now, but it will if the others don't get Coco Jumbo out of wherever the tortoise has gone. Unless… unless the others are… unable to find the tortoise, and they're…

He moves on from that train of thought, and instead focuses on the arduous task of trying to get his loafers off with just the stumps of his arms, and his feet. He starts by trying to kick off the shoe by the heel, and trying to leverage it off, but he can't see very well with all the water, and the angle is more than a little uncomfortable. His other option is to prop his feet up and onto the table, and he does just that. Eventually one of his feet slips out, and the shoe clatters onto the wood. Incredibly unhygienic, but it'll have to do. He's definitely not getting the sock off, and instead moves his attention to the other shoe.

_This dream, _Giorno thinks to himself as he tries to wedge his other shoe off with his soggy sock clad foot, _is incredibly tedious_. He wants to go back to his other dreams—this one has gone on long enough. Eventually the shoe plops off with an uncomfortable suctioning noise, and nearly takes his sock with it. Now he's stuck with a soaking wet, half-on half-off sock, and he can't even take it off. It refuses to slide down his foot. Wonderful. He looks back up to the entrance of Mr. President.

There is—_good grief_. There is practically a waterfall just—flooding in, streaming in—when, _when_ did that start to happen? And the sky? The blue of whatever was outside has gotten so dark. They must be—they must be underwater. This would be an excellent time to wake up. Any minute now.

And if he wasn't going to wake up from this, then his subconscious mind could at least have the good decency to change this to one of his regular dreams about drowning and not-drowning, where he just floats aimlessly for a few minutes in the dark. At least those are comforting, in a sense. This is just making his nausea come back, and god forbid he throw up in the water and make it slosh around with whatever else is floating in.

Right. _Right_. Focus.

He has two feet and no hands. There is water flooding into the room because Coco Jumbo is probably underwater, and if this is anything like his other dreams, then no one else is going to magically appear and help him. _Oh_, and Naranica and Mista are passed out, unlikely to wake up anytime soon. He feels cold, and he feels wet. He wishes that he could take off his socks.

Gold Experience appears before him, uncalled but not unappreciated, and while their metallic body is cool to the touch Giorno feels the warmth of their affection in the back of his mind.

"This isn't a dream, is it?" They turn their green scarab carapace eyes to Giorno's own.

Gold Experience's soft _muda_ is both faint and damning. Just like his own arms Gold Experience is missing their forearms, and on both they have the zippers left by Sticky Fingers.

"Do you think," Giorno says while trying to wade around the table, "if we started stamping our feet, it would do something?"

Gold Experience hovers away to Narancia's side, and they seem to be inspecting the other teen's wounds with a curious eye. They don't verbally acknowledge Giono's words.

"You're right. That would be childish." Giorno watches a water bottle bob along, gently moved across the room, and when he looks up he sees that the waterfall has lessened to a trickle, and that the blue of the outside is a much lighter color, to his great relief. While it doesn't solve all of his issues, it certainly increases the amount of time he has to search for a solution. Without hands he cannot grab the bottle, but he can use his arms to sort of guide it to himself.

"What would we even create?" Giorno looks at the bottle as it knocks between his knees. "What would get rid of all this?"

Gold Experience takes their time hovering over to Giorno. They take a moment to stay by Mista's side, and then they make their way to the fridge, which has somehow been pulled or forced open by the waves of the sea or of the movements of Coco Jumbo's body. The supplies they had just picked up pour out of the fridge, and Gold Experience kicks them about, trying to herd a few bags of snacks and drinks over to Giorno. Eventually the two of them have a good assortment of items to choose from, if they had any ability to do anything with them. Giorno looks at Gold Experience. Gold Experience looks back at him.

"This is all well and good," Giorno says while toeing at one of the bags of chips. This particular one is carbonara flavored, and he knows that the pesto one must be somewhere else. Mista and Narancia had fought bitterly over the flavors. Bruno had eventually taken an entire row to end the argument, shoving the bags into some zipper dimension in his leg before anyone else had noticed, which Giorno imagines the employees had been deliberately avoiding making eye contact with the group of mafiosi. "But we still haven't figured out what to change these into."

Gold Experience makes a gesture to their face with one of their forearms. Had they still had their hands, Giorno is sure that they would be pointing at their mouth. He squints at them suspiciously.

"Now would be an expectionally poor time to become like Sex Pistols."

Gold Experience's expression does not change, but their _muda_ is forceful and scolding. Giorno goes to put his hands up in a conciliatory, placating gesture, but is abruptly reminded of their current predicament when he does so.

"Alright. Hungry?" he asks. He gets another _muda_ for his troubles.

"Thirsty?" This gets him a vigorous nod. Oh. _Oh_.

"Oh." Gold Experience tilts their head at him. "Maybe if we made plants that drink a lot? But they might die, because this is all seawater."

Gold Experience tilts their head the other way with a _muda_ that sounds considering, but in the sort of way someone might say 'go on' but without words, and in a sort of distracted tone of voice.

"I wish that you could _talk_," Giorno says to them, a bit petulantly if he were being honest, but there is nobody else around to hear him, and Gold Experience is a bit of a captive audience of himself, if he really thought about it. "I mean, what does it say about me that the only thing the ghostly representation of my _soul_ can say is _muda_?" Giorno refrains from stepping on one of the bags. It wouldn't even be satisfying—the sound of the pop would have been covered by the water.

Gold Experience does not so much as move a centimeter, but Giorno can feel them retreat from his mind all the same.

"No—I didn't—I didn't mean it like that." He reaches out a hand for one of their cheeks and, _ah, no_. He can't—he can't hold their face. "I'm not talking about _you_," he says a bit desperately, placing his forearm on their shoulder instead. He can see the incredulity in their unchanging stare. He moves his free forearm to their other shoulder.

"If you're a part of me… something that _I've_ made, then I just…"

Gold Experience moves their face closer to his own. They do not have a breath to breathe, but all the same Giorno imagines that he feels something whisper across his face.

"Take Sex Pistols, for instance. They can all talk to Mista, and they can communicate their desires. But then again, Narancia has Aerosmith, which _is_ a toy plane with machines guns… but then, what about Fugo? _Fugo_." Gold Experience moves a bit closer. "Purple Haze is… quite obviously… tormented by his own self-hatred, isn't it?"

Gold Experience brings their face even closer. Without pupils Giorno cannot tell what they're looking at, so he doesn't even bother trying to guess. Instead he looks at the streaks of color that drips down from their eyes to their jaw, and he looks at the curved slope of their shell-like head piece. It is in his distracted examination of Gold Experience's features that he doesn't notice their movement.

They headbutt him, right in the center of his forehead. It sends him reeling back from them, jerking his head from theirs.

"What was that for?" he asks while rubbing at the spot with his inner elbow, which is a feat of trying to maneuver around the zipper, which bites into the skin of his face when he's not careful.

Gold Experience answers him with another _muda_, and then a series of _mudas_ that he fears will not end, and so he rushes to cut them off.

"You're right, you're right." This gets them to stop, and Giorno is left floundering as he tries to think of a way to keep the peace. "I shouldn't go around psychoanalyzing my own team members. Besides," and Giorno's mind gets caught on this line of thought before he can stop it, despite knowing better, "we'd never have enough time to discuss why Abbacchio's soul is constantly replaying the past, right?"

Gold Experience comes at Giorno again with a volley of _mudas_ and their head, intent on headbutting him again. He dodges out of the way.

"Okay, okay! That was uncharitable of me!" His pleas are apparently not sufficient enough to appease Gold Experience. "Please," Giorno says while trying to stifle his laughter, "we really need to focus."

Giorno's answer does not come from so much as a sound or a gesture that Gold Experience makes, nor from a conscious thought on his part. Instead, it comes to him from a place he very often did not think about.

Giorno had only ever seen square watermelons out in the markets the handful of times his mother had deigned to cart him around like an unwanted purchase for which she could never find the return receipt back when they had still been in Japan. His mother engaged in what could only be described as a hummingbird's diet while out with her friends, and he remembers how they would pass straight by the produce on the way to the café du jour. He remembers that for the longest time he had assumed that all watermelons came in squares, and had not even recognized a circular watermelon as being the same kind of fruit the first time he had seen one.

Giorno also remembers his great disappointment upon finding out that the square watermelon, for all of its aesthetic charm of being delightfully cubic, was inedible, due to the fact that in order to retain its shape it must be harvested before it is ripe.

A classic case of appearances over functionality. And Giorno's own watermelons will also be inedible, but for entirely different reasons.

Gold Experience hums, resplendent and bright, before Giorno even has a chance to share his thoughts. They already know what they must do. The issue, they both quickly find, even if it might be possible to use their stand power with their feet, is that they have become entirely too comfortable using their hands. Useless energy sputters down Giorno's arms, and it sparks at the seams held tight by Sticky Fingers' zippers. Now, Giorno has never played baseball on account of being a sufficiently active teen in Italy, and like any other reasonable Italian teen he would play a pick-up game of football or two, but regardless of his experience, or lack thereof, with baseball, he imagines that what he's trying to do would be somewhat similar to a asking a pitcher to pitch with his feet. There's the ingrained muscle memory of having thrown a ball with your hand a hundred times, and he's quite certain that he's never seen someone kick baseballs around as a viable and valid method of play, but he'll be the first to admit that he doesn't pay close attention to the world of baseball, so who knows.

And so Giorno stands there, soaked to his knees, in sterile silence, trying to pitch with his feet, as it were. The energy of his stand will not travel down his legs. He has the idea in his head, he has the image of turning a bag of chips into a plant that blossoms and fruits into a watermelon, which would then balloon to previously unknown heights because of the water in the room. But what is in his head does not travel further than his chest.

Giorno supposes that this situation is maybe… less dire than others. He is not _actively_ in the process of losing his arms, having already lost them, and he hasn't lost anything else while currently fighting anyone. His blood pressure and his heartbeat feel fairly regular, for all intents and purposes, and he has both his eyes, and he can breathe. It… could be worse. Could be better too.

He needs… something to get him to focus. He feels the frustration bubbling in his stomach. His chest feels sore from having been taped down for several days straight, and he can't even take the tape off, by virtue of having no hands. And it's not like he could ask anyone else either. Thankfully he doesn't think that his hair has started to come out of its braid, but he knows that he'll look like a mess, and soon, if he can't fix it. He could… Buccellati might be able to fix it. He keeps his hair braided, after all.

Hm. Bruno Buccellati. Giorno cannot quantify how exceptionally lucky it was to meet a man like Buccellati. He is sure that he would have gotten into the mafia one way or another, and he knows the strength of his own convictions. Giorno knows himself. It is, perhaps, one of the only things he does know. But for as much as he knows himself, there are things he needs to repress.

He has ripped off his own arms several times in these past few days. Back there, in the plane cabin… Giorno has already begun the process of forgetting the pain. He doesn't think he'd be able to do anything, if he kept the memories of all his hurts sharp in his mind. Normally though… it is not just the feeling of these memories that he forgets, but also the entire experience of them. He'll forget not just what everything looked like, but also what he smelled, or what he touched… everything. And usually, if he's particularly unlucky, they'll come back to him at the strangest times.

Vivid. Clear. Present.

The image of Buccellati's eyes though—irises very blue, pupils very large, eyelashes very dark—is… a lasting one.

The sensation of… slicing his own arm off. Somehow it pales in comparison to what he felt flipping in his stomach when Buccellati yelled at him. Which is absolutely ridiculous, when he thinks about it, but—

Something has—grabbed his legs—

He tries to jerk away from whatever has slithered up his calves, but instead he finds himself falling, and wildly he pinwheels his arms out. He tries to scootch back once he's crashed to the floor and to his butt, and when he looks at what is grabbing him—

Oh. It's a… a plant. He must have… while he was thinking of… The plant does not disappear upon closer examination.

He… knows that watermelons have long, climbing stems. And clearly this one found it fit to climb him. He sees the densely woolly hairs that indicate the youth of the plant, and the coarse leaves that have just begun to sprout from the stem. Despite the water that now has almost entirely soaked him and comes up to his waist, he stays seated. He scootches forward to the plant and awkwardly arranges both of his feet around it, and with his legs curled in a roughly pretzel-like shape the watermelon is nestled in the space of his lap. It's beautiful, and it's lively.

Giorno tries to direct his energy down into the plant, and it responds weakly to his efforts, waving towards him with unfurling leaves. It is slow going. He can feel Gold Experience's power ebb and wane down his legs, and it judders through his muscles in fits and sputters. At this rate he'll have fruit this time next year. Not that he—not that he blames the plant, of course. It is trying very hard to answer his desires. It's a wonderfully strong plant, despite the conditions. But he needs to give it more.

"You're a very good plant, you know," Giorno says through the sharp tang of embarrassment. He looks around the room, and confirms that Narancia and Mista are still passed out before turning back to the plant. "It would be helpful if you could grow larger. We could do with some fruits." It responds to his ministrations by curling towards him with its creeping stem, and another plant tickles the underside of his left foot. Giorno's sock is gone, and not in the way that he had expected. He tries to stave of the first plant's affections when it tries to twine around his waist, and he gives it his right arm to climb instead.

"Look at you!" Giorno coos at the second plant, and it seems to twist around his leg in response to his words, "I'm so proud of the both of you. And do you know who would be even prouder? Buccellati. And he'd look at you, and he'd smile—"

Despite the fact that neither plant can see what Giorno is remembering in his head—Bruno, in the rising morning sun, turned towards the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, in profile, gaze directed at Narancia—they seem to react to the image all the same. Giorno suddenly has a faceful of large leaves, and the other sprouts so thickly he can no longer see his thigh. And there, right before his eyes, he sees that the first plant has flowered, dotted with orangey-yellow petals along the stem.

"Wait a moment, just _wait_," Giorno says in a rush, trying to untangle his arm and leg while not hurting the plants, "you can't fruit right on top of me—you'll crush me." Gold Experience floats into the picture by hovering over Giorno's lap and watching with an interested eye. They do not, however, help Giorno get free from the leafy embrace.

"_Please_," Giorno tries pleading with the plants. Instead he feels another bloom from his other sock, and the one by his face starts to fruit. Maybe the water level has gotten lower, maybe it hasn't. Giorno wouldn't know. Instead he tries lowering his upper body to roll the first plant off his torso and onto the floor, before it can pin him down. He is now well and truly soaked and there is absolutely no saving his outfit. He hopes the tape on his chest doesn't get too uncomfortable, but he's not going to be surprised if it gets a bit weird and slips around.

And speaking of slipping—the first plant slips off him, through a combination of Giorno's own efforts and the new weight of the fruits, which are quickly swelling with seawater. It's such a shame that these watermelons are going to be entirely inedible. He finds that untangling the two around his legs has become no trivial task because, once again, he is reminded of his current lack of hands, which put him into this predicament in the first place. How troublesome. He hates feeling useless, and that's what this has made him feel for the most part. Right up until he somehow managed to pitch with his feet.

Gold Experience bats a few leaves around and, now that they've gotten the hang of using their feet, they draw the plants away from Giorno's limbs. He's finally free to get up,and he goes to the collection of bottles and snack bags that Gold Experience had brought over earlier. Hopefully he'll be able to turn the plants back into the supplies once the coast is clear, as it were.

He has a few false starts. It's easier to encourage an already existing plant than it is to perform the initial transformation from non-living to living, and Giorno stands there, looking at the floating chips, stumped. It is with great embarrassment that he reflects upon what had caused the plants to grow the previous few times, and upon realizing _why_, he has the gut-flipping decision of having to _actively_ choose to think about… He looks around the room again. Narancia and Mista are still passed out in their respective seats. He breathes in, and then he breathes out. The key issue here, he finds, is how flustered he is at the very idea of just thinking about Buccellati's face. He has a wonderful smile. He has very vibrant eyes.

Objectively, Giorno is sure that many people would agree that Buccellati is an attractive man. Giorno knows what else his classmates might say about attractive people, and inside his own brain he feels a great discomfort at the idea that maybe he likes looking at Buccellati so much because he might… feel like his classmates. He doesn't think that he does. He's pretty sure that he doesn't have the, the… directed desire that they seem to talk about having. But it makes him uncomfortable to even acknowledge that he finds… Buccellati attractive. He doesn't even want to approach the topic in his own mind. There's the… embarrassment over having a maybe-not almost-crush, and then the _shame_ that follows that very idea, and it's all just bundled together in one terrible mess. Giorno tries to shake off the mortification clinging to his mind, but like cobwebs, he finds that trying to wipe them away merely disturbs them and displaces them, and doesn't truly get rid of the phantom sensation of having been touched and having touched them. He refuses to examine those thoughts any further, and in his distraction he has managed to transform several of the bottles into a few plants.

It's for the best. The mafia is… no place for attachments. He has no idea what happened to that man, from his youth. And for Buccellati… Giorno has his suspicions, and he has seen the man's lack of appetite, and how he seems to… no longer bleed. The life energy in Buccellati's body is blinding in its vibrancy, as it always is, but his _body_… Giorno shudders. He refuses to examine that line of thinking.

He and Gold Experience get back to work, now that they have several viable plants. It's easier going, now that he also has experienced the sensation of directing their energy through his legs. The plants respond eagerly, as do all his creations, and soon they have watermelons swollen with seawater, and they continue to grow and grow, sucking what they can in the room. It's not enough to completely clear the room, and water still drips from the walls and the carpet is well and truly soaked, but at least if more floods in Giorno won't have to face the concept of drowning to death outside of his dreams.

The outside is a light blue, when he looks up at the entrance to Mr. President. He hasn't heard the others speak in some time, and he's not sure what he'll face when he leaves. But staying here will not solve his problems, and he's not about the become the kind of person that waits around to be helped. Reasonably assured that he's done all that he can inside of the room, he decides that he needs to see what has to be done outside. There's no time like the present. He goes to step out—

And finds himself in the sea.

He looks around, and has to figure out the best way to tread water, and it involves a lot more kicking than it usually does. It is to his great and infinite alarm that he sees that Coco Jumbo is trying to swim, by itself. For a tortoise, it is doing a remarkable job. And by remarkable job, Giorno thinks that it's amazing that it hasn't sunk yet. Giorno tries to wrangle Coco Jumbo to his side, but it's difficult without any hands to grab onto the tortoise. The waves are choppy, and he hears something groan in the distance that sends adrenaline running down his spine in a jolt so strong it almost makes him lose his balance floating on his back. Eventually Coco Jumbo seems to get the idea, or maybe it simply views him as the closest landmass to get out of the water, and it crawls onto his chest and settles by his neck, as far from the water as it can get. It's going to be difficult for him to find the others, if he's limited to staying on his back with a tortoise by his neck, but Giorno is prepared to weather this particular storm.

But before he can even think to start calling out a few names, he hears his own.

"Giorno!"

"Over here!"

He tries to turn in the direction of the voices, which really involves slowly moving one arm so that he can spin in a very slow, self-contained semi-circle, and he can already feel the strain in his neck as he keeps his head above the waves. He hates the sensation of water in his ears. The others reach him before he even has a chance to see them.

"Giorno, why didn't you stay in the turtle?" Bruno manages to say in a voice that is both fond and exasperated.

"Tortoises," Giorno says while blinking the water out of his eyes, "cannot swim. Unlike turtles."

Trish's gasp is appropriately upset. "Was Coco Jumbo drowning?"

"We certainly were under water for a little bit. But enough of that. What happened to the plane?"

It's Abbacchio that answers Giorno, and his voice is as rough as the waves. "Turns out you didn't actually get rid of the stand with your self-sacrificing heroics. We got lucky because Ginger Spice over here has been hiding her stand this entire time."

"And I keep telling you that I didn't have a stand before all this!"

"That doesn't answer my question," Giorno interrupts, hoping to stop any Abbacchio-Trish argument in its tracks.

"The stand attacked the plane's engine," Bruno says while floating to Giorno's side. He gives Coco Jumbo a cursory glance before turning his gaze to Giorno's. "We were able to make a parachute from the cockpit, thanks to Trish's stand. How are the other two?"

"Still unconscious. I only woke up because of the water, but it must not have bothered them."

"The… water?" Bruno asks with a quirk of his brow. Bruno's hair, which at times could look like a helmet made from a bob, is plastered to his head, but in such a way that the hair that usually hangs in front of and by his face has been artlessly tossed into some ridiculous loops that have gotten caught onto his brooches. Giorno wonders why the other two haven't pointed this out to the man.

"It is not just people that can get into Mr. President." Giorno watches Bruno's eyes widen as he understands the meaning behind Giorno's words.

"Is the room flooded?"

"It was very nearly getting there."

Bruno squints at Giorno. He's being remarkably expressive with his face, but Giorno figures the situation would be trying on anyone, especially if they had just fallen from an airplane.

"Was?"

"I made a few plants to drink up the water. It's still a bit damp in there, but we don't have to deal with half a meter of water anymore."

"How did you…? Giorno, you don't have any hands. I watched you—"

"I used my feet." Giorno interrupts before Bruno can go any further.

"You… used your feet."

Giorno would nod his head in any other situation, but instead has to verbally confirm what he has just said.

"I'd prefer not to repeat myself but yes, with my feet."

"I thought," Bruno pauses, interrupting himself this time to awkwardly swallow. Giorno's not sure that he understands the look in Bruno's eyes. "I was under the impression that you could only use your hands."

"So was I." Giorno doesn't mean for his response to come out so curt, but he also feels that were he to expand on what happened in Mr. President he would have to expose himself to the mortifying ordeal of telling Bruno Buccellati to his face that the image of his smiling eyes allowed Giorno to find the energy within himself to use his stand in a way that he had not thought possible just moments before. Giorno would rather drown himself in the Tyrrhenian Sea than admit to that.

"Speaking of hands," Trish says while also floating to Giorno's side, "look at what I have." She holds something out with one hand, and Giorno can just barely turn his head in her direction. Seeing his difficulty she brings the object to right above his face.

It's his… brooch. The one he had infused with life energy before he… It pulses, vaguely like some very strange heart, and from the spots on the ladybug's back five fingers just out of the shell. He sees the beginnings of a palm, and he's never felt more relief at seeing half a hand than at this very moment.

"Thank you for saving my brooch, Trish. I appreciate it."

"I saw it while I was running into the cockpit. Buccellati had said you could only use your hands, so when I saw it…" Giorno hears the shrug in her words, even though he cannot see the motion, and she probably cannot do the motion very well while treading water.

"That was very thoughtful of you. I know it must have been hard, trying to get it and to avoid the stand's attack at the same time."

"Alright, kumbaya time's over," Abbacchio says, and unlike the others he does not come to Giorno's side. Giorno figures that's for the best. "We need to figure out a way to get to Sardinia, now that we're basically sitting sardines."

Giorno sees Bruno's smile curl around one cheek before he answers Abbacchio. "We're swimming sardines, aren't we?" Giorno hears Abbacchio's grunt, which sounds begrudgingly amused.

"They swim so slowly they might as well be sitting."

Giorno waits a beat to see if anyone else has anything to say, and also because he doesn't want Abbacchio to interpret it as him cutting the other man off.

"I can make a fish to take us to Sardinia, like back in Capri," Giorno eventually volunteers after they've floated for a few moments in silence.

Bruno's smile curls around his other cheek. Giorno closes his eyes so that he doesn't have to see it. "That would be wonderful."

"The rest of us will have to go back into Mr. President—it will be difficult for the fish to carry all of us."

"I'll be staying outside," Bruno says, and he emphasizes his point by bringing a hand to Giorno's shoulder. The touch startles Giorno, but he refuses to open his eyes.

"Alright. I'll get a bottle and see what I can do. Trish, Abbacchio, it might be best if you go back in ahead of me."

"See you inside, Giorno," Trish says as she leans over him, and he can feel as she drops first the brooch into the room, and then puts her hand in and falls away. The sudden loss of her body causes the water to slosh a bit more energetically by Giorno's side, but not by much. Abbacchio goes inside with not so much as a word, and Giorno briefly mourns that his eyes are closed. While he doesn't want to see Abbacchio's face from that close per se, Giorno had been struck by the sudden image of Abbacchio with runny makeup, and he wishes that he could have confirmed what he saw in his mind. Giorno supposes that he'll get the opportunity when he goes inside the tortoise.

Giorno breathes in, and then he breathes out. "I'd hand you Coco Jumbo, but, well," Giorno trails off. He hears Bruno huff. Bruno still hasn't moved his hand.

"And after you give me this fish," Bruno says, and his voice is much closer than Giorno had expected it to be, but he refuses to open his eyes, "you should try to get some rest. You're practically falling asleep already."

Giorno swallows. What a convenient… He doesn't give voice to his thoughts. "I'll try."

"That's all I can ask, isn't it?" Bruno sounds… not necessarily angry, but there is certainly an edge of reprimand. Giorno still does not open his eyes.

"Buccellati?" Giorno does not ask _what did I do?_ Or _did I do something wrong?_ He wants to, but he doesn't.

"We can talk when we get to Sardinia. But for now," Bruno sighs, "just try to rest."

* * *

**A/N: (from ao3 version of this fic)**

A few notes:

1.) Has anyone else ever wondered how Giorno was able to use his feet during the Mold DoctorTM fight, even though Bruno during the Carne was pretty clear that he and Giorno can only use their hands? Well here's my answer to that

2.) I am a lying liar that lies, and so now this fic has 3 chapters. The scene I really Saw in my head and want to write is Bruno and Giorno on the beach, but then I thought "I'd like to take the readers along with me to get to the beach, and their conversation there"

3.) The thrust of this fic will (hopefully) become self-evident in the final chapter. I have always wanted to see how Bruno comes to trust and rely and... become inspired by Giorno. And I want to really believe in the depth of his feelings that he displays during his final speech to Giorno. Don't get me wrong, I love that final conversation between them, I just want more build up, you know?

4.) I always hesitate about tagging. I want to tag things that I feel can be sufficiently supported by the text. That is why I didn't tag for trans/ace until this chapter, because I didn't want the readers to go "well I've read the author's other works, so maybe the same identities for character apply here?" So yes, Giorno is presented as trans (personally I aim for non-binary transmasc-leaning, but he doesn't use that language) and also asexual and aromantic-spectrum. I haven't quite decided how *I* would describe his aro identity, but I wouldn't be opposed to demiromo.

The reason why I hesitate to tag things is

i.) I don't want to tag unless it shows up in the text, so e.g. Giorno is also intersex, but he doesn't learn this until much later, and will be revealed in my GioTrish fic

ii.) spoilers

iii.) I don't want to bring readers who come for identity-specific content, and then to disappoint them when it's not evident in the text. I feel it's important that I continue to write trans and aspec content because there is so little of it, and very often it will be either or but not both at the same time. It is very... disheartening. I won't go into the details because I think this A/N has gotten quite long, but I'm sure that the people reading this for whom this rings true, you will understand.


	3. In Mr President, Take 2

Abbacchio wears waterproof makeup, apparently. Giorno finds this out after he chances a peak at the man when they all settle down inside, unbothered by the damp seats because they are already soaked from the sea. Abbacchio's lipstick is a supernaturally perfect and vibrant purple, his eyeliner has not run, and somehow his concealer has not washed off. Giorno can still see the stark line of the pale foundation against Abbacchio's natural skin along where his jaw transitions into his neck. Evidently Abbacchio must feel Giorno's inspection, because his eyes pop open with an annoyed grunt.

"What're you looking at?"

"Just making sure that you're alright," Giorno says. If there was ever a time to be thankful for his poker face, it would be now. He keeps his mouth as straight as possible, and his eyes and brows as relaxed as he can make them. His eyelids have a terrible habit of twitching if he squints them too much, and he just knows that Abbacchio would notice if that happened.

"Sure," Abbacchio says with a snort, "keep your concern to yourself, kid. You're the one without the hands."

"I can still heal, if that's what you're worried—"

"If you think I'm going to let you touch me with your feet, you've got another thing coming."

Giorno feels his face involuntarily scrunch with distaste. "Fair enough."

Giorno goes back to watching his brooch pulse, and watching the process of jewelry knit itself into flesh. He's going to have to ask Bruno to zip his forearm back together, before he can make the other. He could speed up the process, much like he did with the plants, but, as it _is_ his own hand, and he figures that it would be better to not take any chances. Best to not take any chances with Mista's and Narancia's injuries either, not unless something happens to change their conditions.

His Frankenstein brooch-hand sits idly on the table next to his shoes, and Giorno can already feel the anxious under stimulation going up and down his limbs with jittery impatience, filling him with the impotent desire to do something. He searches around the room, quickly passing over Abbacchio, lingering over Narancia and Mista, only to come to rest on Trish. He's about to get up to join Trish in her inspection of the watermelons when Abbacchio's voice interrupts him.

"Those your shoes on the table, Giovanna?"

Giorno doesn't bother looking at Abbacchio—he can guess the man's expression well enough from the growl in his voice.

"Yes."

"And why the hell are they on the table?"

There are any number of ways that Giorno can answer this. He doesn't know how he's going to respond to Abbacchio's annoyance. It's like his mind has stalled, and now that it's slowed down it's sputtering uselessly over the resentment and anxiety that's burrowed its way deep into his bones.

Giorno Giovanna is tired.

He's tired.

None of them have been able to properly rest since being ordered to escort Trish and then their subsequent betrayal of the Boss. Giorno thinks that maybe, at best, he's had four hours of uninterrupted sleep. And absolutely no privacy, which might have been one of the most demoralizing aspects of all this. At school, the worst was the locker rooms. Taped-down breasts, no matter how much he tries to shove them down and away into his armpits, do not magically disappear just because he wants them to, and he's positive that his packer made from socks is not passing any inspections, no matter how casual. Giorno had gotten very good at the art of switching shirts while still wearing another one, and he had almost perfected the art of changing into and out of pants very quickly. This was, of course, no easy feat when considering that it was nigh on impossible to find boxers wide enough to go up his hips but small enough to stay around his waist, and when you considered that it was fantastically difficult to tell when your zipper had caught on your packer when you couldn't even feel the thing, and you were just trying to prioritize speed.

So yes, being stuck with a group of strangers 24/7 for the past almost-week was infinitely more stressful than any day in the locker room, because at least that had a very defined start and end time, and he could carefully plan just how he was going to tackle the situation. He hasn't been able to un-tape his chest at all for the past few days, and he hadn't felt comfortable trying to explain why he needed a bathroom and couldn't just relieve himself like the others. He had appreciated, in some abstract sense, Narancia's and Mista's attempts at bonding when they had tried to encourage him to just piss over the side of the boat with them in Venice, but even if he could, he wouldn't have, and eventually it had just ended with Abbacchio muttering about his and Trish's delicate sensibilities.

Giorno's mind has stalled on all of this, and he still hasn't responded to Abbacchio. He's quite frankly surprised that the man hasn't said anything yet. The only salient thought that Giorno's had throughout this entire stress-induced haze of remembering school locker rooms and his inability to pee like 'one of the boys', is how tired he is. Of all of this. He tries to keep that thought out of his voice, but he can taste it on the back of his tongue like the canned energy drink he had chugged back when they had resupplied their snacks and drinks. It had been some weird coffee flavor that had managed to not taste like coffee at all but some combination of aluminum and artificial citrus and he was still regretting that choice. He was also preemptively regretting his next words as well, but never let it be said that Giorno Giovanna would be swayed from his path once he chose it.

"Could we not?" he asks, still looking at Trish, who is not so subtly listening to them, and standing there by the fridge in tense silence. Abbacchio's retort doesn't come nearly as quickly as Giorno expected it to, despite how long he had made Abbacchio wait. And the longer it takes for Abbacchio to respond, the more Giorno feels his annoyance coil tight in his gut, even though he knows that Abbacchio is more than likely just trying to wait Giorno. He turns away from Trish and back to where the man is sitting.

Abbacchio is looking at him.

Abbacchio, in general, has a surliness about him that makes him unapproachable, and the almost permanent wine-smell has Giorno avoiding him out of habit. At this moment, however, his face is curiously bland, almost blank compared to his usual default expression. After a few moments of the least intense eye contact that Giorno has ever had with Abbacchio—which was perhaps not saying much because, by virtue of his oddly colored eyes, Giorno always found himself looking at them quite closely and then subsequently would get caught staring—the man clears his throat and then leans forward, placing his elbows on his knees. There's something oddly conciliatory about the gesture, even if Abbacchio's expression does not change.

"So. Those look kinda small. What size are you?"

Giorno blinks. Abbacchio grimaces.

"Last I checked," Giorno says slowly, suspiciously, "I was a thirty-nine."

Abbacchio whistles. "Those are tiny."

Is this? Is he being made fun of? Giorno squints at Abbacchio, but Trish beats him to the proverbial punch.

"Wow, yours are even smaller than mine," she says while coming back over with one of the smaller watermelons in her arms and a towel clutched in her left hand. She gives his shoes a once over before plopping on the coach next to him, leaving a decent amount of space, but still relatively close. "I'm a forty-one," Trish says while propping her knee-high suede boots onto the table. They look absolutely and terrifically soaked, which he imagines would happen when you've suddenly parachuted into the Tyrrhenian Sea because of a plane crash. Giorno watches her put the fruit onto the table by his shoes, and then as she uses the towel to gently blot her boots.

"Well," he says, looking for something to say. "You are taller than me."

Trish's careful blotting does not slow, but she does turn her attention away from her work to Giorno. "Oh. Right."

Giorno, who has not once gone a day without bemoaning his height, stares at Trish incredulously. She understands the meaning of his look well enough.

"I don't really think about it. My mom was taller than me, so I always felt a bit short."

Giorno turns his gaze to her boots. "Your heels are… what? Seven, eight centimeters?"

"Eighty-five millimeters, actually."

"And how tall are you?"

Trish's smile does not lessen the blow. "One hundred and seventy-eight, on a good day. Why? How tall are you?"

"One hundred and seventy. On a good day." He goes to rub a hand over his braid, but finds that he can't when he is once again reminded of his predicament. He has an awkward moment of holding his hand by his head, and he can't even play off the motion as if he was going to do something else. He feels every moment of keeping his arm up, and he feels every moment of when he brings it back down to his side.

"Maybe you'll have a growth spurt?" Trish says while placing a consoling hand on Giorno's thigh.

"Unlikely," Giorno sighs. "I've been this height since I was eleven."

Trish pats Giorno's leg, and her palm is warm through the fabric of his pants, which have gone uncomfortably cool while air drying. She smiles at him, and he finds it in himself somewhere to smile back at her, no matter how weird it makes his cheeks feel. She's trying. He should too.

"You know who you should heal?" Abbacchio says, apropos of nothing.

When Giorno looks over, he sees that Abbacchio has his chin in his hands, and his smile is, quite frankly, confusing and bizarre. Of the people in Mr. President currently in need of healing, there are only Narancia and Mista. Giorno stops himself from squinting again.

"...Who?"

"Mista." Abbacchio does not expand on his statement.

Giorno looks between Mista, who is still passed out, artlessly flopped over the arms of his chair, and at Abbacchio, and then back between them again. From where he is, Giorno cannot see an immediate change in Mista's condition, but it is entirely possible that he's missed something.

"Is there something wrong with him? Besides the—" Abbacchio's grunt cuts Giorno's words off. And somehow, impossibly, Abbacchio's smile deepens.

"You could say that." He moves his left hand to point at Giorno's shoes, and he keeps his chin in his right palm. "When Mista wakes up, you should heal him with your… newfound abilities."

This time Giorno does squint. He's missing something here, but evidently Trish does not. She clutches at the fabric of Giorno's pant leg and digs her nails in before bending over, and she starts to laugh—first in her nose with a particularly loud exhale of air that Giorno can hear clearly from his position, which then transforms into a sort of graceless snort that wobbles into a deep guffaw from somewhere in her chest.

"No," she sobs out, hunched over herself. She's finally removed her hand from his leg to press both of them into her stomach, with the wet towel and all, as if by doing so she'll be able to contain her laughter. "_No_." Trish repeats, breathless and red-faced.

"_Yes_," Abbacchio says, and he could not possibly look smuger.

"Do I want to know?" Giorno asks, now trying to futilely ignore how there is, once again, some joke that he's clearly not getting, and that nobody wants to explain it. He's also not sure if he'll be able to suss it out just by observing Abbacchio or Trish, and he's not sure that he wants to get it either, because for all that he doesn't understand, he has a sneaking suspicion of what it could be.

"Hey, Giovanna," Abbacchio says with a smile full of teeth, "do you paint your nails?"

Giorno looks down, despite knowing the answer. His feet remain there, firmly on the floor, in all their un-painted glory, and he wiggles his toes just for the hell of it. They're starting to feel quite cold, especially now that he no longer has any socks, and he doesn't want to put his wet feet into cold and wet shoes. He can only imagine how they'll smell later, and he barely suppresses a shudder of disgust.

"I trim them…?" He eventually offers, looking up in confusion. He sees Trish peer down, leaning over the edge of the couch to get a better look.

"They're not too bad looking, for feet. Kind of… not dainty, but… precisely made?" Trish straightens out with a considering hum. "If that makes sense."

It does not make sense. When Giorno looks down, he sees feet. He sees his own feet, which have remained relatively unchanged for the past few years.

"What, sort of like looking at a statue?" Abbacchio asks. Trish nods. "When Mista wakes up you should show him your new abilities first hand."

It is at this moment that the hypothetical shoe drops for Giorno, as it were. His face scrunches before he can stop himself, and he just barely stops himself from jerking back, which causes him to awkwardly move back and forth in his seat.

Abbacchio shakes a hand carelessly at the wrist. "Seems like the golden boy's finally caught on. Took you long enough."

"Is that supposed to be a joke?" Giorno asks, trying to keep his discomfort from being heard. It doesn't work, and his voice cracks before he can finish his question. It certainly doesn't sound like a joke, not from where Giorno's sitting, and the implications of Abbacchio's statement bubbles uncomfortably in Giorno's stomach.

"Trust me, you haven't been around long enough yet, but there's nothing that gets Mista going more than discussing—"

How Abbacchio was going to finish that sentence Giorno will never know. Trish laughs again, and struggles to form coherent words from the sounds coming out of her mouth.

"What's the," Trish gasps out with monumental effort of her part, "what's the best…?"

Giorno's convinced that they must all be speaking different dialects at this point, for all that he does not understand the trajectory of this conversation.

"The _best_," Abbacchio says while finally moving his chin off his hand, and using both to indicate some distance of space between them, "is a thirty-six, thirty seven, and a hundred milimeter heel." Abbacchio emphasizes the last part by roughly using his thumb and his pointer finger to show what must be a one hundred millimeter heel, and Giorno wishes that he could sink into the couch cushions and never resurface ever again. He should have just let himself drown, not even half an hour ago.

Bizarrely enough, Trish is still laughing. This is maybe the most _present_ that Giorno has seen her for this entire 'trip', and it's about Mista's… Trish turns her head away from Abbacchio with a shake, hand by her mouth. Her eyes crinkle when she sees Giorno.

"Oh, don't give me that look," Trish says while once again putting her hand back on his thigh. Somehow she has managed to not break any of her nails, and her French tips seem to be remarkably well-maintained. Giorno figures that he's looked at her hand rather than at Trish herself for entirely too long to be polite when he notices the 3D art of mathematical symbols on her nails, and looks up with almost palpable embarrassment. When Giorno does meet Trish's eyes she smiles, and it is with panicked desperation that Giorno tries to look anywhere but at her smile—but she has freckles splashed across her cheeks—and her eyelashes are honest-to-god pink—

_Please_, Giorno thinks in unaccepting despair, _is now really the time for this? _Trish pats his thigh again, and Giorno is struck with a knowledge that comes to him with unimaginable clarity. This is how he dies, Giorno's sure of it. Death by being smiled at.

"It's been really stressful lately, hasn't it?" she says with another shake of her head, and she returns to drying her boots for all of two seconds until she's turning a sly eye back to Giorno.

"What?" he asks when she doesn't say anything.

Trish leans forwards to him and lowers her voice enough that Giorno has to shuffle a bit closer to her. From this distance all he can really smell in the air between them is the lingering scent of the sea, which has an odd sort of brininess that's mixed with the days-old sweat on their bodies and clothes. He wrinkles his nose against the abrasiveness of it, and tries to focus on Trish instead.

"I've got an idea."

"Which is…?"

She puts a finger up, leans away, and goes back to her efforts to salvage her boots.

"So, Abbacchio," she says after a few decisive pats with the towel, and a seemingly very serious inspection, in which she twisted her ankles to get a better look at _something_, she looks up at the man.

"Yeah?"

"Why do _you_ know the exact details of Mista's foot fetish?" Trish puts her shoes back onto the table, and her heels click loudly on the wood. "That was awfully specific, wasn't it? Knowing the measurements right down to the centimeter? To the millimeter?"

Abbacchio's face goes through a series of expressions that can only mean terrible things for both Giorno and Trish. So _this_ is the actual reason why he'll die. Giorno wants to go back to a few minutes ago—he much would have preferred that death over this one.

"Looks like Ginger Spice's got some bite," Abbacchio says, and Giorno can see his shoulders shaking. Giorno tries to prepare himself for the worst, if need be. He doubts that Abbacchio would turn to physical violence against his own team, but he _had_ gotten creative before, back at Libeccio.

"I wouldn't be so quick to underestimate me if I were you. As I understand it, your stand's not fight-oriented." Giorno can see the faint glow of what must be Trish's stand right under her skin as she talks.

Abbacchio clicks his tongue. "Feisty. It's like you've had a personality switch now that you've got a stand."

"Just because I didn't say it before doesn't mean that I wasn't thinking it."

"Fair enough," Abbacchio says while tossing his hair over his left shoulder with a flick of his head. It's dried remarkably quickly for how much of it there is. "Mista likes to talk about hot women, and about hot women in hot shoes. You end up noticing a thing or two after a while."

"_Noticing a thing or two_ is not the same as memorizing the exact details." Trish re-crosses her legs, and her heels once again click against the wood.

"Sure," Abbacchio says, seemingly conceding to Trish's point. He moves in his seat, settling into the cushions with an arm slung over the back of the chair, crosses his legs and, for all intents and purposes, looks as unruffled as can be. He seems more amused than anything, but Giorno wouldn't exactly describe himself as an expert on either Abbacchio's mercurial moods or on the intricacies of Abbacchio's facial expressions.

"You seemed pretty engaged when Mista was talking about Monica Bellucci back in Venice," Trish says with a tilt of her head. Giorno watches the two of them with the same sort of focus with which you might watch a train crash, helpless to stop it and helpless to stop looking at it.

"I think we can all agree that Monica's a beautiful woman."

"What size are her feet?" Abbacchio scowls. Trish smiles. "My shoe size is about hers, isn't it? What am I? Smaller than Monica? _Bigger_ than—"

"Are you people really discussing Monica Bellucci? Again?" Narancia shouts from his seat, jerking to wakefulness in a disorder jumble of limbs and falling over to the floor because of the flailing of his arms. Narancia's thrashing about gets Giorno up and off the couch, and over to the other teen's side, but there's not much that he can do while he's still missing his hands.

Abbacchio snorts and points an accusing arm at Narancia, keeping the other one still stretched out across the back of his seat. "You're the guy that just woke up because we were talking about her."

"I mean, she's a real pretty lady," Narancia says with doe-eyed innocence. He is still sprawled out on the floor, legs half on his previously-occupied chair, arms stretched out over his head. Giorno looks across the table at Trish. She looks back at him and shrugs.

"Are you alright?" Giorno asks while turning back Narancia. He turns those impossibly wide eyes onto Giorno.

"I could use some healing, if you're offering."

Giorno nods. "I am. But I won't be able to use my hands, at the moment. Can you wait, or do you need help now?"

"How are you going to heal me if you don't even have hands?"

"I can," Giorno pauses. This is his life, he supposes. He doesn't shake his head, and he doesn't close his eyes, and he doesn't sigh. He looks straight at Narancia and straight at Narancia's Elizabeth Taylor purple eyes, and he tries to keep his voice flat. "I could heal you with my feet."

Narancia scrambles away in a flurry of motion, all the while chanting _no_ and not taking a single breath. Narancia's elegant and graceful escape is thwarted when he collides into the chair that Abbacchio is sitting in, and he flashes his arms in front of his body in the shape of an X.

"Absolutely not!" Narancia says, vigorously shaking his head. "I can't believe that you're in on this too—"

Abbacchio shoves a foot into Narancia's back, which causes the teen to immediately stop talking and to instead make anguished, indecipherable noises of indignant disbelief.

"Get away from me. You're just going to bleed all over my pants." Abbacchio says while pressing harder into Narancia's back, which just causes the teen to flail more. "And besides, the wet towel over there wouldn't know how to make a joke if it—"

_Thwack!_

A wet towel slaps Abbacchio straight in the face, effectively silencing him. It's Trish's wet towel, to be precise. Giorno thinks that this is the longest train crash that he's ever seen and he has absolutely no intentions of turning away.

"Oops." Trish's smile is coquettish. Abbacchio, however, no longer looks amused. In fact his face has twisted into a facsimile of the expression that he wore when he first saw Giorno, and it has Giorno standing up before he can stop himself. His sweat is cold under his jacket, but he represses his shiver. Abbacchio's attention turns from Trish to Giorno, but his expression does not change.

"We've reached the island," interrupts a voice. And what a beautiful voice it is. It immediately catches Abbacchio's attention, and ensnares the rest of them as well. Giorno can already feel the stress leaving his temple. When he looks up he sees one of Bruno's magnified eyes peering down into the room, and behind Bruno is a wide expanse that can only be the sky over Sardinia. "Thank you for the fish, Giorno. It made the trip much easier."

Giorno nods. "You're welcome, Buccellati. Is there anything else that you need?"

Bruno's hum is considering. They can see his pupil rove around in his single visible eye, and his gaze lingers over Mista's prone form. The ridges of his iris look like some oddly blue-colored Moon landscape that Giorno finds difficult to stop staring at, and from this magnification he can see the splotches of different blues, some lighter and some darker. "I can see that Narancia must be awake," at this Narancia waves, "but what about Mista?"

"Still asleep."

"Alright. Let him rest. Everyone else come outside. I think we can all give our legs a stretch." Bruno's eye disappears as he finishes speaking, and the four of them look at each other in tense quiet. Abbacchio is the first to leave the turtle, tossing the towel onto the floor, frown mutinous. Narancia follows, and Trish picks up Giorno's broach as well as the watermelon she had put on the table.

Giorno waits inside. He looks at his shoes, which are still on the table.

* * *

**A/N:** Trish Una, Please Marry Me.

Anyways! Unfortunately it seems I live in a house built on lies, and the Brugio Beach Scene will be... in the next chapter :) I thought it would be more interesting to get some character interaction before we got to the Very Emotional Talk. You can see why my chapters for "It's Always You" are just... So Long. I have a Scene that I wanna write, and how we get there is a trip.

Now, for some clarifications: decided that Gio is aroace, but experiences sensual+aesthetic attraction. He is nonbinary transmasc and his gender presentation will change as he gets older :) Trish's identity is explored in my GioTrish fic, which I'll be getting back to soon. I'm trying to wrap this up, ch4 of "It's Always You", and ch2(+ch3?) of "Criminal World". I have plans for the brugio weekend, but I'll probably be late with my fills for it, as always lol.

I've been feeling weird about my work lately, because there are so many interpretations possible of my work once I put it out there. I felt bad enough about it that I was going to delete all my jojo stuff and just keep it private to the friends I had been showing it to! But this is fanfic, so I can clarify things in the A/N, AND I can have whole entire chapters and scenes to explain things more! So thanks to monsterkiss, asheliabd, and the other half of flavouredice for talking through that with me.


	4. On the beach

The sand is warm when Giorno finally steps out of Mr. President, and it immediately gets stuck between his toes in wet clumps that refuse to budge no matter how much he shakes his feet. A little ways off he sees Bruno scanning the distance, which consists of beach along the coast and some sparse shrubland that would hardly be able to conceal anything human-sized, but they'd encountered enough that the caution was well-earned. Moody Blues stands next to Abbacchio, constantly transforming between faces and bodies, its limbs growing and shrinking as the two of them rewind further and further back. So far it doesn't look like Abbacchio has seen anyone except for what appear to be tourists, and apparently a gaggle of children.

Moody Blues stops on a pink-haired teenager just long enough for Narancia to notice and make fun of, right up until Trish comments on the remarkable similarity between the shade of her hair and this random teenager's. This is then subsequently enough to make Narancia suitably remorseful and to rescind his unkind remarks about strange hair colors and braids, and in an attempt to placate Trish he begins to comment on the size of her watermelon. These remarks, of course, do the opposite of putting her into a good mood—as anyone could have guessed had they heard how Narancia had been going on about the fruit's remarkable roundness and firmness—and what follows next is a confusing blur of glowing stands and the earth getting wobbly under all of them. Trish somehow uses her stand to cause Narancia to sink into the sand and all the while she yells at him about the inappropriateness of his comments and Giorno thusly moves on and turns his inspection of their surroundings elsewhere.

He tries to extend Gold Experience's awareness down the beach and around them through his feet, and the initials attempts sputter before they even get down his legs. He now has the opportunity to look at the man that inspired him enough to use his stand in new ways, but that knowledge still haunts him, has settled and made its home uncomfortably in his stomach, and twists his insides worse than he thinks Purple Haze's virus tore through his blood. Which is a ridiculous comparison, but he supposes that he still gets to feel a bit dramatic in the confines of his head, as long as he doesn't say it out loud. Eventually he manages to spread out Gold Experience's probing power through the ground but it is evidently too forceful when he sees the shivers run up everyone's spines, which causes them to turn to look at him.

"There are no other life energies in the vicinity, save for ours," Giorno says, carefully avoiding looking at any of them for too long, and instead focusing on the watermelon now sitting forlornly by Trish's feet.

Bruno's hum is considering. "We can no longer rely on Gold Experience's ability of detection. The attack on the plane was proof enough of that."

"I won't allow that to happen again." The shame that Giorno feels burns hot, incomparable to anything else that he has ever felt. His words feel like ice against his tongue, and they prick coldly in his throat as he says them.

"Which is my responsibility, not yours." Giorno looks up and finds that Bruno is still staring down the line of the beach. "We can't afford another mistake like that."

"It was my—"

"Trish," Bruno interrupts, turning his gaze away from the beach and startling Trish in the process. She had been watching Moody Blues with the intensity of a new stand user not yet used to the bizarreness of the situation, and she takes a moment to acknowledge Bruno's words. "Please get Narancia out of the ground. I need the two of you to be available at a moment's notice. Abbacchio won't be able to fight while using his stand."

Abbacchio grunts. "I can still punch stronger than these two pipsqueaks."

"Pipsqueak?" Trish asks while drawing herself to full height. With her shoes she's just barely a centimeter or two shorter than Abbacchio.

"Heels don't count, Ginger Spice."

"Why do you keep calling me that? I look nothing like Geri Halliwell."

"You're the one that called your stand Spice Girls, and you're a redhead." Abbacchio shrugs his shoulders and shakes his head. "Doesn't matter if you look like her or not."

"But, I think, the more important thing is," Trish says while pulling Narancia up and turning the ground solid under the older teen, "how do my feet compare to hers? Is that the real reason why—"

"No!" Narancia puts himself between Abbacchio and Trish, arms spread out wide. "No more feet talk! I've got an Aerosmith and I'm not afraid to use it!"

"Oi!" Bruno says, voice sharp. It immediately stops whatever argument the other three were about to have before it can even begin, and Giorno sees a contrite expression sweep over Bruno's brows and eyes before it blows away as quickly as it came. In a voice noticeably softer and more measured Bruno continues speaking. "Both of you keep your guard. Giorno, walk with me."

Bruno waves one hand towards the expanse of beach that he had just been staring down and uses the other to take Giorno's broach from Trish. There's almost a whole hand growing out of the ladybug's shell, and the fingers occasionally spasmodically twitch with the residual energy of the transformation. Bruno takes off and Giorno hurries to follow. Plumes of sand follow Bruno's every step like the ghost of some ephemeral dress' train, and Giorno moves to the side to avoid the dusty spray. Giorno also avoids looking at Bruno's back with the dogged determination that he applies to most else of his endeavors and instead turns an eye to their surroundings.

The weather is not especially nice, but neither is it especially poor. It is about average in everything—temperature, wind, sunshine… It sets Giorno's teeth on edge. The sea licks neither strongly nor weakly at the beach's edge, and while there are pebbles and shells scattered along the sand there are not enough of them to make them a truly noticeable aspect of the scenery. Giorno finds himself searching for something, anything, in the off-white sand, in the low-shrubs that crop up further away from the water, and in the beach grass that grows, anemic and yellow, in between the few rocks that have somehow rolled their way down to the shore.

"It would not be wise to travel much further," Giorno says when he sees that Bruno has no intention of stopping. Bruno's silence is sharp. Giorno licks his lips. "Even with both of them near Abbacchio… Narancia is still injured, and Trish is—"

"I know." Bruno finally slows down, and turns around to Giorno. Giorno tries to keep his gaze moving as naturally as possible, letting his eyes sweep over Bruno's face before moving on to watch the gulls pecking at the ground off to the side.

"You're angry."

"No," Bruno sighs. "Just frustrated."

Giorno could hardly fault anyone for that, in these circumstances. He looks back at the brooch that Bruno still has in his hands, and the beginnings of a wrist juts out awkwardly from the nearly-consumed ladybug. An odd sight to be sure, but perhaps no odder than human finger bones in a fridge. This entire trip has done wonders on desensitizing Giorno to a whole host of things—not that he would have characterized himself as particularly squeamish before, but still.

"With me?"

"What? _No_. Why would you think that?"

Bruno sounds shocked enough that Giorno turns his attention away from the birds to Bruno's concerned gaze. His expression looks genuine, but very rarely does Giorno think he's seen Bruno not look earnest.

"You made a comment when we were floating in the sea," Giorno pauses to measure his words. "It seemed to be directed towards me."

Bruno's blink is slow and his frown is faint. "Your actions, back on the plane."

Bruno does not elaborate. Giorno drags a foot through the sand and imbues the grains with enough energy to make tiny faoni crabs, which run towards the water as soon as they are able to. Giorno watches them with less interest than the gulls, who almost immediately catch sight of the crabs as they scuttle away.

"What about them?" Giorno asks, dragging his words slower than his foot.

"When I give an order, I expect it to be followed."

Giorno does not look up and instead runs his foot back, watching as crabs spring out of the sand in the trail left by his movements. The gulls flutter their wings anxiously. Some of them puff their chests out while others make a few inquisitive caws. A few particularly courageous ones hop tentatively closer.

"Even when the order is wrong?"

"Wrong how?" Bruno steps closer. Giorno can see Bruno's loafers in the periphery of his vision.

"It would have been too late. The stand had already begun to consume my hand, and by the time I would have transferred it to you… it wasn't worth it."

"That's not quite how I remember it, Giorno."

Giorno tilts his head. From the corner of his eyes he can just barely make out Bruno's face. "And how do you remember it?"

"The stand had just gone by me and was about to attack Trish when you decided to break open the window. Which was completely reckless of you—"

"But it worked, didn't it?"

"Define worked," Bruno implores in a voice softer than water is insubstantial, and Giorno can no easier hold water than he can hold onto the way Bruno's words make him feel.

"My actions got the stand off the plane, did they not?"

"No, Giorno," Bruno sighs, "they did not."

Giorno blinks. And then he blinks again. He turns to look Bruno fully in the face and all he can see there is Bruno's slight frown and Bruno's lightly furrowed brows framing those damnably earnest eyes. "What do you mean?"

"When you threw the stand out of the window it simply attacked the next fastest thing—the engine."

"It had… not already attacked the engine?"

Bruno shakes his head and his hair moves wetly with the motion, which hangs in clumped strands and twisted knots around Bruno's forehead. "Not until it had been tossed outside, no. Why?"

It doesn't take long for the implications to settle into Giorno's bones, and there is no way to shake this knowledge easily. He had been the reason the engine had been attacked, and the reason why they had all nearly drowned in the sea. Giorno aims for levity with his next words, but he knows that he misses and ends up somewhere near the sort of soberness he defaults to when his mind is five hundred steps ahead of his mouth.

"What's that phrase you said back in Venice? The one about the clothes and swimming?"

Bruno's smile tells Giorno that his attempt at changing the subject was about as graceful as Mista's attempts to talk to Trish without accidentally saying something uncouth, but Bruno lets it go without comment. "_Iammo a mmare cu tutti i panni_," Bruno says, presumably in Napulitano. He doesn't keep Giorno guessing for long, and quickly offers a translation. "_We go into the sea with all the clothes_. It's not a good way to go, essentially."

Giorno feels his lips curl, unbidden. "There's another one you like to say, isn't there? Something about a duck?"

"You're not exactly subtle, are you?" Bruno laughs. "_L'acqua è poca e a papera nun galleggia. The water is shallow and the duck doesn't float_. That should be obvious enough, shouldn't it?"

"Indeed it is. Thank you for indulging me in this impromptu dialect lesson."

Bruno shakes his head again and his smile is much wider than it was before. "Then I imagine that you won't mind indulging me." Giorno nods his assent. "Surely you've heard some of these before? I don't know how a boy your age hasn't picked up a word or two in the city."

Giorno hesitates for not even a second but Bruno must catch it regardless of how well Giorno tries to hide his discomfort. Bruno goes to speak but Giorno beats him to it, but just barely. "I learned Italian in school. And what I did not pick up there I picked up from the news, papers, books… those sorts of things."

"Ah, that would explain it, wouldn't it?" Bruno looks at Giorno with keen eyes but does not expand on his statement.

"Explain what?"

"Sometimes you are remarkably… precise with your language. And, forgive me for saying this, but it can get a little… high-minded."

"High-minded?" Giorno's voice is faint as he repeats Bruno's words. He can already feel a flush working its way up his chest.

"Charismatic."

The flush crawls its way ever higher up Giorno's neck. "Those two words don't even remotely mean the same thing."

For the first time since they'd landed on this beach Bruno touches him. Lightly, and on Giorno's shoulder, and Giorno had watched Bruno move ever so carefully close before putting a hand out. The weight of Bruno's hand makes Giorno warm in the same way that the dampness of his clothes leaves Giorno cold. He shivers all the same.

"I didn't mean it like a bad thing," Bruno says while rubbing his thumb over where Giorno's neck blends into his collarbone.

Between a few strokes Giorno finds himself compelled to speak. "I'm actually Japanese. Or, well, through my mother's side. I don't know about my biological father." Giorno watches Bruno's eyebrows inch up his forehead at the information and watches as Bruno tilts his head ever so slightly. His hair follows the movements as best it can while still wet from the sea.

"How fortunate for—" Bruno pauses with a hum. His half-smile is decidedly self-conscious. "For us that you found your way to Italy."

"_I_ did not exactly find my way here. My mother married an Italian man and moved us here." Giorno goes to shake his shoulders but stops when he feels the motion move Bruno's arm and instead keeps his own arms conspicuously still.

Bruno moves anyways, and he smooths his hand over Giorno's jacket, palm on Giorno's collarbone, fingers curled around Giorno's shoulder. "I'm sure that you won't mind indulging me one more time?"

Giorno tilts his head to better match Bruno's stare, taking a moment to performatively think over Bruno's words. That half-smile curls around one cheek even more while Giorno extends the silence. "Depends on what you're asking me."

"An expression for an expression. Do you know any about the sea?"

Giorno's laugh never escapes his throat and instead shakes his chest. "That's a large category. Were you looking for anything in particular?"

"Whatever you want to tell me," Bruno says with a full smile. Bruno has dimples. They're lopsided, with the one on his left cheek being deeper than the one on his right. Giorno looks away and back at the gulls, who have returned to their previous activity of pecking at the ground now that there are no more crabs to catch their interest.

To the gulls Giorno says, "I've got one about a frog and the sea, if you'd like to hear it."

"I'd love to hear it."

Giorno tests the words out in his head. It's been a while since he's spoken Japanese, and he feels rusty with disuse. "_I no naka no kawazu_," Giorno says slowly, trying to feel the words, "_taikai wo sirazu_." Speaking and thinking in Japanese was something Giorno had come to associate as completely separated from speaking and thinking in Italian, and he had been young the last time he had heard people speak to him in Japanese. His mother certainly didn't use it around the house anymore, and the only reason he remembered this was because of the reference to frogs.

"What does it mean?" It takes Giorno a few seconds to register Bruno words and he has to ask Bruno to repeat himself. Bruno does.

"There was a frog that was born in a well," Giorno says, trying to remember the story, "and he thought himself invincible because he was the largest. But once he left the well he saw the sea and realized that he was not so large after all."

"That phrase says all of that? What an incredibly compact language." Bruno sounds genuine, with none of the mockery Giorno had heard directed at him by the other children back when he had first come to Italy and could only speak a little, and with a thick accent.

He shakes his head and finally returns his gaze to Bruno's. His eyes are earnest. Giorno never doubted that they wouldn't be. "No, it means something like _a frog born in a well doesn't know the sea_, but I thought that you'd like to hear the rest. I'm afraid that I don't know another one, off the top of my head."

"That's fine. I can take a rain check."

Giorno wants to ask about the feasibility of a rain check in these circumstances. He likes the promise, of course he does, but he has the evidence in front of him—the evidence that he has been so desperately trying to avoid. Deep purple bags have made their home under Bruno's eyes, and there is a puffiness to Bruno's cheeks that Giorno doesn't remember being there when he first saw Bruno's lean face. There is also the matter of Bruno's hand, because while the weight of it makes Giorno feel warm the coolness of it is undeniable. He can't even blame his damp clothes for the chill. _What a waste_—

"—of a man."

Bruno blinks at Giorno curiously. "What was that?"

"Just thinking." Giorno shakes his head. They were useless thoughts.

"Seemed like a serious thought."

"A worthless one."

"Well." Bruno looks at Giorno for a few long moments before eventually lifting up his other hand, the one not currently pressed onto Giorno's chest. He is no longer holding a ladybug brooch but a fully formed hand and forearm, wrists, fingers, muscles and all. "Why don't we turn our thoughts to getting this back to you? I can zip it on, but even after I reattach it the area will be sensitive for a bit."

"That's more than acceptable," Giorno says while putting out his left arm, which still has Sticky Fingers' zipper along the wound. "I appreciate the help, as always."

"You appreciate the—Giorno—" Bruno splutters. "There's no need to be so formal about this. I could practically hear you reading off of a script."

Giorno ducks his head and the movements causes one of the curls on his forehead to jostle free and tumblr down his face and in front of his eyes in a mess of twisted hair. In Giorno's effort to avoid looking into Bruno's eyes all he had succeeded in doing was ruining his hair style. And horrors above, he didn't have the hands to fix it. "It's not exactly like I have experience in situations like these."

"I'd be worried if you did." Bruno's hands appear in Giorno's vision, which is now firmly focused on the beach beneath them, and on Bruno's loafer and on his own sand-covered feet. "May I?" Giorno nods, keeping his head down. "This will hurt. I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to re-open the zipper and your wound." Giorno nods again. Pain is but a brief, transitory experience, one that he is willing to endure hundreds of thousands of millions of times if he has to. This will just be a one in the many. He feels Bruno's hesitation and puts his own arm out closer, finally looking up. It's harder to make direct eye contact with the hair in his face, but harder does not mean impossible, and he shakes his head a little to move the unwoven curl.

"Is something wrong?" Giorno asks after a few seconds of silence. Bruno's fingers almost imperceptibly curl tighter into the shoulder that he is currently holding before letting go and bringing both his hands to Giorno's arm in a few uncharacteristically jerky movements.

"No, just… I suppose it's silly of me to expect you to act like the others. If you were Narancia or Mista you would've already been complaining."

Giorno inclines his head in acknowledgment of Bruno's words but almost immediately regrets it when his hair follows the motion. "Ah, yes. Mista moaned quite excessively the last time Gold Experience healed him. Mista must have bothered Narancia with it as well, because he acted exceptionally shifty when we rejoined him on the boat, back in Venice."

A shadow passes so quickly over Bruno's face that Giorno almost misses it. And he would have, had he not been looking Bruno straight in the face a handful of centimeters away. "Does he do this often?"

"Do what? Get hurt? Wouldn't you know better than I?"

Bruno hums and turns to look down the beach in the direction that the two of them had come from. Abbacchio still stands there with Moody Blues next to him and both Trish and Narancia prowl around, obviously on the lookout. Coco Jumbo has not moved from its spot on the sand, half buried, its green shell dwarfed by the watermelon next to it. "Humor me."

"He gets shot a lot by his own bullets, if that's what you're asking. Last I thought about it, it seemed to be somewhere around ninety percent of the time."

"_Ninety_—when have—you've been keeping count?" Bruno asks, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice. He turns to look back at Giorno with wide eyes while stuttering out his question. "No, that's not—" Bruno shakes his head definitively. "Ignoring that… statistic. Has he ever done anything to make you feel uncomfortable?"

Giorno can feel himself frown before he can help himself. He sees Bruno see him frown, and he sees his own frown quickly reflected on Bruno's face. Giorno rushes to speak, feeling odd under the scrutiny. "Mista doesn't make me feel any more uncomfortable than, say, my classmates. Honestly, he's about average. Which is saying a lot actually, considering that you're all strangers that I met less than a week ago."

"I suppose you're right—it has just been a week. But, Giorno," Bruno pauses, and his expression is one of exceptional embarrassment. Since Venice Bruno's face has been slow to color, instead remaining pallid and pale, but this time his cheeks turn faintly rosy and deep lines bunch in the space between his brows. He seems to swallow his own words instead of saying them.

"What is it?"

Bruno looks down and from this distance Giorno sees his lashes fan out, dark and thick, leaving just the barest of shadows across his cheeks, which still hold the faintest of that pink color. "It feels like I've known you for longer than these past few days… Or maybe I've just been waiting to meet you all this time, and that's why it feels like it's been an eternity."

Giorno feels the ever-present urge to look away and to focus on something else, like at the gulls, but instead transfers his restless energy to his limbs. He, however, has become too adept at using his feet to channel Gold Experience's powers and hundreds of faoni crabs burst from the sand and announce their presence with the clicking of their claws. Bruno jerks back at nearly the same time that Giorno does, and they both try to hop around and avoid the crabs as best they can while the little critters crawl about. Giorno fears for his toes. In some spots there are so many of them that they seem to move in a coordinated wave of limbs and shells with the promise of a good pinching. This is, of course, when the gulls decide to join the fray. They descend in an uncoordinated mess of wings, and soon after Aerosmith's propellers accompany the sound of caws and claws.

"Buccellati!" They hear Narancia yell as he quickly follows his stand. "Are we being attacked?" Giorno can hear the soft swish of the others as they rush through the sand, and his deep embarrassment knows no end. The well of his embarrassment is deeper than the one the frog had been born in, and Giorno hopes that he can never escape this particular well, in the desperate desire to never know an embarrassment larger than the one he finds himself currently swimming in.

"No, no, we're fine," Bruno says with a wave of his hands, still holding onto the one he has yet to zip back onto Giorno. "We just got carried away discussing the crab salad that they make with faoni up north on La Maddalena island." They had absolutely not been discussing any northern Sardinian seafood dishes but Bruno winks at Giorno before he can even think to say anything, which causes Giorno to keep his mouth shut, looking at the other with as placid an expression as he can muster. Bruno waves at the other two before they can get much closer and Narancia looks at them over Aerosmith's visor.

"You sure you're both okay?"

"Absolutely. Thank you for checking on us, Narancia. I'll let you know if we need help." Giorno lets Bruno's reassurances wash over him as he shakes out his limbs. In their hopping his other curls had loosened, and another one had joined the first down his forehead. He paws at his hair uselessly with his forearms but only manages to get a few strands to hang behind his ears.

It takes a little while longer for Narancia to be satisfied and in that time of Bruno and Narancia speaking Giorno looks around for something large enough to transform into his other hand. There are a few scallop shells that have washed ashore but none of them are big enough to catch his eye and he quickly moves on. In his searching he has wandered off from Bruno and Narancia and after a little while he hears the soft padding of shoes against sand as someone walks towards him.

"What are you looking for?"

Giorno keeps his head down, poking at and turning a few shells over with his feet. "I'm running out of broaches, and I figured that I might find something else to make my right hand out of."

"We can look together after I give you back your first one. How does that sound?"

Giorno spies a few snail shells, which are twisted round themselves in tall, thin spires, but they too are not large enough for his purposes. He turns his attention back to Bruno. "That would be acceptable."

"Just acceptable?"

"I didn't mean anything by that—I was—" Giorno clicks his tongue. "It would be more than acceptable, thank you." Giorno sticks his left arm out before he can stumble over his tongue and his words again and for as much as he enjoys speaking with Bruno he wishes that he could stop making such a fool of himself. It's tiring, and he hates feeling tired around Bruno.

Bruno takes his arm. "I'll try to do this quickly."

The pain of un-zipping is nowhere near as intense as the pain of cutting his own arm off, but the wound does start bleeding as Bruno opens it, having been unable to clot and scab over or stop the potential blood flow. Clearly Bruno has experience with these sorts of things though, and both of Sticky Fingers' hands work in tandem to unzip and then to attach Giorno's new hand. _That_ is the part that hurts the most. Or, it doesn't necessarily hurt per se, but Giorno feels as Bruno reconnects his nerves and his muscles and his veins with an alarming clarity, and each connection sends some strange sensation zipping up and down along his bones. It very nearly reminds him of those electric buzzing toys that people would dare each other to place on their tongues at school, but this is so much more concentrated than that, almost like lighting up every cell in his flesh with more energy than it can contain.

He makes an unintelligible sound. He knows that he does because he sees Bruno's eyes bounce up from where he was concentrating on Giorno's arm to Giorno's face, and Giorno tries to mask any other noises that he makes with a particularly loud exhale of breath. The direct eye contact with Bruno makes him feel particularly uncomfortable, and he imagines that this might be how those bugs feel, the ones that are still fluttering weakly as they get pinned straight through their thoraxes and to a corkboard in order to be displayed. He is acutely thankful that he has never had to pin a bug down in order to appreciate it, but that thought gets swept away with the sound of Bruno's voice.

"All done. I hope that wasn't too bad."

Giorno licks his lips. "It was fine. Not the worst that I've experienced."

"But not the best?"

"No. Why would it be?"

Bruno smiles enigmatically. "You'd be surprised. But enough of that," Bruno continues, apparently deciding to ignore the rest of the conversation. "While you're essentially my captive audience, let's return to the topic at hand. You seem to have a propensity of hurting yourself in pursuit of your goals, don't you?" Giorno stands there, too shocked to even give his new fingers an experimental wiggle. "Sorry, was that too off-topic?"

"It was… a little surprising, yes."

"I've been thinking about it ever since you gave me that, quite frankly, poor excuse about why you needed to hack your arm off in the plane."

Giorno bristles at Bruno's words. "_Excuse_—"

"You may find it more expedient to hurt yourself to achieve something, but I can guarantee you that there will always be another way, if you allow someone else to help you." Giorno cages his words behind his teeth and chews on them with a nervous energy. Unbidden, he remembers how Bruno had held him on the plane, when he had been delirious with pain.

"Be careful with what you project onto me, Buccellati." Oh all the… of all the things he could have said, these are the words he chooses? Giorno almost immediately regrets them as he says them, but he can no longer take them back.

Bruno leans in closer, pulling Giorno's hand into the shelter of his own stomach, and looks down with a kind eye. "I won't take offense because I think you're just lashing out at me in discomfort. Someone else might not be so understanding, in the future."

"Let's not pretend that we know each other—"

"May I hug you?"

Giorno looks at Bruno straight in the eyes. They are blue, and they are earnest. Something passes over them that seems to make their color even brighter, even darker. It's almost like watching a cloud float over the sky, but Giorno knows that the sun behind them is weak, and that the sky is a particularly uninspiring grey. He doesn't understand what he's seeing. "What?"

"I need you to know that whoever has made you think that you need to do this all alone, and that you need to cut yourself up to do it, was wrong. They were wrong, Giorno." He doesn't even register the hand that touches his jaw, not at first. The touch is light, barely there. It goes to stroke through his hair, and to move it off of his forehead.

"You don't even… you don't know what you're talking about."

One of Bruno's hands pushes Giorno's curls behind his ears, and the other holds Giorno's new hand tightly but not bruisingly. Giorno twists his wrist but doesn't move his arm away. "Maybe I do, maybe I don't."

Bruno's eyes are a deep blue. Giorno can see them so very clearly from this close. Giorno thinks of being in the well, and how in the well at least he had the comfort of knowing his surroundings, and of knowing his limitations, and of knowing the boundaries. He sees the sea. He wants to jump.

Giorno tilts his head closer to Bruno's. "When I was a child I used to cry in my crib. For food, to be changed, to be held. My mother preferred to go out, and my step-father preferred to feel like a powerful man, and he liked to let me know how strong he was. What makes you any different from the teachers that saw my bruises and looked away?"

"I," Bruno says with a smile, soft and sweet, "will not look away."

Giorno swallows. He can see Bruno's pupils looking at him and he can see parts of his own face reflected in Bruno's eyes. "I'd like to believe you."

"I promise that I will be here for you until the very end." Bruno smooths his hand through Giorno's hair again and brings it all the way to cup the back of Giorno's head in a motion so light that Giorno almost doesn't notice it. What an incredibly soft touch. Giorno marvels at the sensation of it.

"And how long will that be?"

"As long as I can give you."

"And if that isn't enough?"

Bruno does not stop smiling. Giorno feels fingers tangle in his hair. "Then I'll give you more than I thought I could. Whatever you need, however much you need. With you I've felt something that I didn't think I would ever feel again, and it's more precious to me to return what you've given to me than to try to keep it to myself."

"Buccellati—"

"Bruno. You can call me Bruno."

Giorno shuffles closer and feels his toes bump into Bruno's loafers. "Bucce—Bruno. I have put your team in incredible danger, and have threatened all our lives with my ambitions. What could I have possibly given to you?"

"More than you can possibly imagine." His expression is earnest. His eyes are genuine. Giorno can't hear the lie. He doesn't want there to be a lie.

"I'd like that hug now, if you don't mind."

Bruno nod is small and Giorno can feel each exhalation of breath as Bruno pushes him closer with the hand on the back of his head. His face gets pulled into Bruno's neck. "It's not your fault." Giorno's not sure to what Bruno is referring. He wants to know, but he also doesn't want to know and so he doesn't ask for clarification. Underneath Giorno's cheek he feels the skin of Bruno's collarbone. It is cold, and it is clammy. Giorno wishes that it were warm. "Listen to me, Giorno. It's not your fault. You didn't deserve any of what's happened to you, and you deserve better." Bruno's words do not change the fact that his skin is not warm.

It is cold.

"You deserve better, Bruno. And I don't think that I've given you that."

Bruno makes an interestingly ambiguous noise that Giorno feels rather than hears under his ear. Whatever it means, it starts deep in Bruno's throat before leaving his mouth in a sigh. "Would that I could show you. But I suppose I'll have to settle for finding you a nice shell to make another arm from. How does that sound?"

Giorno's laugh is wet, and weak, muffled by Bruno's chest. His hand is still pressed between their bodies. "That sounds good."


End file.
